Co-Laborers; Co-Heirs: Miriam and Moses

Beat a little harder. My wife and I were talking after last Sunday, seeing the video for the first time. Just the news, right? Just the news pops up and you go, uh-oh. Like, I don't know about you, but my reaction to news these days is I get tense.

This event coming up on The Gift of Gender is featuring our friend, Doctor Sam Andriades. I first met him when he came to the Triangle maybe five or six years ago. I don't remember exactly when, but he was speaking at our sister church, Peace Presbyterian in Cary and they hosted a dinner for pastors to come and have a round table dinner with him. And I remember going to that dinner with all these questions that I had written down, and it was incredibly enlightening and helpful to have a conversation with him. He was incredibly insightful, and I now have a whole new set of questions that have developed over the last five years that I'm looking forward to asking him. So I hope you'll join us for this event on that October weekend. It's going to be great and hopefully very helpful to us as we seek to navigate questions of gender that have really grown up and loomed very large in our society today. Please plan to join us for that. Hopefully that will help us as a church to engage in those questions and engage the world.

Co-Laborers, Co-Heirs Sermon Series

We are continuing our series that goes along with this special event called Co-Laborers, Co-Heirs. While the event deals specifically with questions of gender and cultural questions, our sermon series is looking to scripture to examine relationships of men and women in the Bible and how God has used those relationships for His glory.

The outline of the sermon series goes through four different relational stories of men and women in the Old Testament and four passages that deal with the relationships between men and women in the New Testament. So it's an eight-part sermon series. Last week, Jeff started with Adam and Eve—the original male-female relationship. This morning, we're going to be looking at Moses and Miriam in the book of Exodus. The passage for this morning is Exodus 15:1-21, not Genesis as your bulletin says. It's Exodus 15:1-21.

We're going to read that together and then I'm going to pray and then we'll talk about it. So let's read God's word together.

Then Moses and the sons of Israel sang this song to the Lord, saying,

"I will sing to the Lord, for He is highly exalted. The horse and its rider He has hurled into the sea. The Lord is my strength and song, And He has become my salvation. This is my God, and I will praise Him; My father's God, and I will exalt Him. The Lord is a warrior; The Lord is His name. Pharaoh's chariots and his army He has thrown into the sea, And the choicest of his officers are drowned in the Red Sea. The waters cover them. They went down into the depths like a stone. Your right hand, Lord, is majestic in power. Your right hand, Lord, destroys the enemy. And in the greatness of Your excellence, You overthrow those who rise up against You. You send out Your burning anger, And it consumes them like chaff. At the blast of Your nostrils, the waters were piled up. The flowing waters stood up like a heap. The depths were congealed in the heart of the sea. The enemy said, 'I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoils. I shall be satisfied against them. I will draw my sword. My hand will destroy them.' You blew with Your wind. The sea covered them. They sank like lead in the mighty waters. Who is like You among the gods, Lord? Who is like You—majestic in holiness, awesome in praises, working wonders? You reached out with Your right hand; The earth swallowed them. In Your faithfulness, You have led the people whom You have redeemed. In Your strength, You have guided them to Your holy habitation. The peoples have heard. They tremble. Anguish has gripped the inhabitants of Philistia. Then the chiefs of Edom were terrified. The leaders of Moab—trembling grips them. All the inhabitants of Canaan have despaired. Terror and dread fall upon them. By the greatness of Your arm, they are motionless as stone. Until Your people pass over, Lord, Until the people pass over whom You have purchased. You will bring them and plant them in the mountain of Your inheritance, The place, Lord, which You have made as Your dwelling, The sanctuary, Lord, which Your hands have established. The Lord shall reign forever and ever. For the horses of Pharaoh with his chariots and his horsemen went into the sea, and the Lord brought back the waters of the sea on them, but the sons of Israel walked on dry land through the midst of the sea. Miriam the prophetess, Aaron's sister, took the tambourine in her hand, and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dancing. — Exodus 15:1-21

And Miriam answered them, sing to the Lord for he is highly exalted. The horse and his rider, he has hurled into the sea.

Great work. That was a lot to read. Let's pray.

Lord God, we thank you for this beautiful song and this description of this worship service that occurred on the other side of the Red Sea, on the other side of your deliverance. Lord, as we consider this passage and specifically, as we consider the relationship between Moses and his sister Miriam, Lord, we pray that you would enliven our hearts. Help us to see what you would have us to see. Lord, help us to see how you and your glory is the purpose of our existence. Help us to see how the celebration of your redemption is our highest call and lord, lead us into a place where we can do that together in beautiful harmony in a way that honors you and glorifies you as this worship service did. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

Okay. So we're looking at these different relationships. Last week was Adam and Eve. This week, Moses and Miriam. Here's how I want you to think about this: we're looking at Exodus 15. Obviously, Moses and Miriam's story is spread over the pages of scripture beyond just Exodus 15. But I would argue that this is the height—the moment in which they were functioning at their highest level together. And so that's why we're looking at this passage, but I'm going to be bouncing around all through Exodus, some of Numbers, even into the prophet Micah to talk a little bit about their relationship. And the reason is that it's an incredibly significant relationship and it's an incredibly beautiful story about how God worked through both of them together and then led them to this place where they celebrated that together and not only celebrated it with each other but led God's people in a grand celebration of all that God had done through them.

Here's how you can think about it. There have been several kind of modern musical acts that have been brother-sister acts. You might think of Donnie and Marie Osmond, those of you who are a little older. Brother-sister act, right? Maybe you think about somebody a little bit more recent like Michael and Janet Jackson. It's not uncommon for families because they cultivate that. I think about the Yanceys and what their family worship must look like because they have so much talent in that family. But it's not uncommon for brothers and sisters to have these kind of musical gifts and then to use them together.

When I was in college, I think, VH1 came out with a series called "VH1 Behind the Music." You would watch these stories—these documentaries essentially—that were about songs or artists and their production of music. That's how we're approaching this sermon. You've just read the song. Right now, we're going to talk about the story behind the music. Essentially, what we're going to do is we're going to review Moses and Miriam's role specifically in the Exodus narrative and specifically in Exodus one through 15. So we're going to be doing a lot of summary of all that God did through both Miriam and Moses in those chapters and then we're going to look at their specific titles.

Moses is the most significant prophet of the Old Testament. The most. In fact, in the New Testament, anytime there is a representative of Old Testament prophets, it's Moses. Anytime you talk to a Jewish person about the summary of the prophetic text of the Old Testament, Moses is that representative. He is the most significant prophet of the Old Testament. Miriam is the first woman to be referred to in scripture as a prophetess. So we're going to look at their role as prophet and prophetess and how God used that specifically and then finally, we're going to look at this worship service and we're going to look at how that was the culmination of all of that and what we have to learn from that.

So to review, here's your outline: Moses and Miriam's role in the Exodus narrative, Moses and Miriam as prophet and prophetess, and Moses and Miriam in worship specifically.

Okay. So let's summarize the Exodus story, shall we? Most of you have probably seen "The Prince of Egypt" or "The Ten Commandments." And so this is familiar territory for many of us. I don't think that I have to spend a lot of time on this, but let's begin with the beginning of the story—Exodus chapter one and chapter two.

There's a big problem in Exodus one. God's people have become enslaved in Egypt and not only have they become enslaved but Pharaoh has forgotten Joseph. And they are being oppressed. They are being crushed. But even in the midst of that, God is blessing them.

They're being fruitful and multiplying like rabbits, and Pharaoh sees that as a real problem because they're becoming more prominent in his land than his people. So he decides we gotta do some population control. He begins by heaping more work on them, hoping that would essentially limit their reproductive processes, but that didn't work. They continued to multiply.

So he issues an edict where he orders the killing of all Hebrew males. Initially, that effort goes through midwives that he's appointed—hey, if it's a boy, kill him. But the midwives don't follow the rules. They don't do that. So then he issues the edict and they just throw the boys in the Nile, throw them in the river. And essentially, that is the death sentence that he issues for that entire generation—Moses's generation of male Hebrew children.

Then we have this incredible story of Jochebed, Moses's mother, actually following the rules in a subversive way. She takes Moses and puts him in a river, into the Nile, in an ark. And there's heavy overtones here—remember Noah, remember that story? It's the only other place where the word "ark" appears in scripture. But Moses is placed in an ark, a tiny basket, and shoved off down the river.

Then there's this little detail about a sister. A sister is not named in the beginning of Exodus, but she follows along to see what would happen to him—like, what's going to happen to my little baby brother? And she watches as the basket is led, surprisingly, to Pharaoh's own household where Pharaoh's own daughter is bathing with her handmaidens. They find this child and they're like, oh, it's one of the Hebrew children. Pharaoh's daughter takes pity on him. She's like, oh, he's so beautiful. Let's keep him.

At that moment, the sister comes to Pharaoh's daughter and essentially says, hey, do you need somebody to nurse this child for you? And Pharaoh's daughter goes, that would be amazing, actually. Do you know anyone? And the sister's like, well, actually, I do. Pharaoh's daughter says, great. Take the child, have them nursed, I'll pay you for it.

Do you get the humor and the beauty of how God preserves Moses in that story? It's a very powerful tale. And what I want you to notice is from Exodus 1 through Exodus 2, almost all of the major players are women.

Women as God's Instruments

There's this narrative that Christians believe in a god who oppresses women, who doesn't value women, that the Bible essentially downplays women's roles. But I want you to see—if there's no Jochebed, if there's no midwives, if there's no Miriam, if there's no Pharaoh's daughter, there's no Moses. Exodus ends at Exodus chapter 2. So the principle first—the heroes, the instruments of God's redemptive work in the story of Exodus are all women. Do you see that?

And if you study scripture carefully, if you read the New Testament as well as the Old Testament, you will find that God works in shocking ways through women throughout scripture, especially when you consider the cultural landscape in which the Bible was written—a cultural landscape of oppression to women for the most part. The ancient world was not kind to women. And yet in the Bible, we see a document that very clearly highlights women's roles and lauds them and holds them up as an example of a group of people that God works through regularly.

Now, there are two things that I want you to think about. One, those of you who are maybe new to Christianity or maybe you're not a Christian and you've heard this narrative that Christians really just hate women and the Bible really hates women—I want to challenge you. Read it. Read scripture and look at how scripture actually talks about women. Look at how Jesus interacts with women. Come to your own conclusions. Don't buy into the cultural narrative.

Now, the other thing I want to say is to those of you who are Christians, those of you who are part of this church. There are probably things that Christians have done that have led to that impression that the world has. I would suggest to you that any sense of ways in which men are oppressive to women that exists in the church did not come from the Bible. And so we need to read the Bible too. We need to look at women's roles and we need to be pressed in terms of how God uses women and think about that as a church. That's part of why we're doing this series.

But look at scripture, because scripture itself is not some misogynistic text that is designed to oppress women.

It's not some misogynistic text that presents women as only negative. It has lots of positive things to say about women and God uses women in incredible ways. Okay. I want you to also notice in the first two chapters of Exodus, the incredible life giving and nurturing kind of role that women play. Do you see that? Do you see that all of these women are working together to give life, to nurture life, to promote life. In the context of a world led by a wicked pharaoh who is trying to end life, right? There's this very beautiful picture of how women engage in this life giving and life preserving role that is presented to us as a model.

Now, some of you are immediately thinking, oh gosh, there's another white evangelical male standing up in front of the church. He's about to tell us that women belong barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. That is not what I'm saying. I am simply saying that there is something incredibly beautiful and powerful about the role of mothers, about the role of sisters, the nurturing nature that women have, that is God given and something that God uses in powerful and incredible ways.

I also want you to note the incredible active bravery on the part of these women. They are defying the most powerful man in the world. Every single one of them—from the nurse maids to Moses's mom, Miriam, even Pharaoh's daughter—they're all defying the edict of Pharaoh. There is a sense that sometimes gets relayed that women's roles are passive. These women are not passive. They're incredibly active. Think about the bravery that it took for little Miriam to go to Pharaoh's daughter and to ask the question that she asked. Do you need someone to nurse this illegal child who's supposed to be killed? Like she's outing herself as someone who is a rebel to the daughter of pharaoh. Incredibly brave, incredibly bold.

Women, there is a model here that goes beyond just barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, submissive, but is rebellious, incredibly brave, incredibly bold, and incredibly faith filled. Notice that. There's a call to women in this passage as a model.

Male-Female Relationships Beyond Marriage

Notice also in this passage that marriage as a relationship between men and women takes a backseat in the beginning of this narrative. Who's the married relationship that's discussed in Exodus one and two? Moses' father doesn't even get mentioned until Exodus six as a part of a genealogy. He's just mentioned. You get his mom without his dad.

There's sometimes this sense, I think, both in terms of the outside world's perspective of how the church is viewed and also within the church that the valuable relationship between men and women is this married relationship. That that's it. But scripture presents an incredibly diverse range of different relationships between men and women. In this case, we have the nurse-child relationship, the mother-son relationship, the sister-brother relationship, the daughter-father relationship, all present in the first two chapters of Exodus.

Sometimes, I think single folks, non-married folks, can come to the church and feel like second class citizens. As though the Bible has nothing to say about relationships that you would have with the opposite gender within the church. But that's not true. The Bible presents an incredible range of relationships between men and women.

You know, I love that we had that choir moment right before we read the passage of scripture where it was like, okay, sopranos, altos, all the different parts of the song, right? Were taught to us and we were instructed to sing together in harmony. That is a picture of what our relationships look like. So, yes, husband and wife relationships are significant. Male and female relationships that are redeemed and used for God's glory in the church, they're very significant. We're going to talk about that. Don't worry. But so are all the other relationships.

Men, you have relationships with women in this church that are not your wives. Women, you have relationships with men in this church that are not your husbands. Those are significant relationships that Christ is redeeming for his glory and for his worship and for his good purposes.

Oftentimes in the church, we become so weary of potential things that could go wrong in non-married relationships that we try to steer people away from that. We create all kinds of boundaries and set all kinds of rules. And sometimes that's appropriate. There's some wisdom to that. But let's not act like there are dangerous dynamics to husband-wife relationships as though the only kind of time that we're going to have trouble between men and women is if it's outside of the married relationship. Like, listen, that's not the case.

God is redeeming all of these relationships and bringing them all together into a harmonious picture of what he's doing. So I just want to encourage you to think about that. Think about your relationships with people who are not your spouse—those of you who are married, those of you who are not married. Think about your relationships with people of other genders. God has a purpose for all of those relationships. What is it? What is he calling you to? And how is that beautiful? Spend some time thinking about that.

The Story from Exodus 2 to Exodus 15

Okay, let's go on with the story. We stopped at Exodus 2. We gotta get to Exodus 15. Here's the rest in a nutshell.

Moses kills an Egyptian and flees to Midian. He meets and marries Zipporah, Jethro's daughter—Jethro who advises him for the rest of his life. He encounters a bush that's on fire and it starts talking to him, tells him to take off his shoes. It turns out to be God. God says, "I'm calling you to go pull my people out of Egypt. I want you to go talk to Pharaoh."

Moses is like, "Woah, burning bush, God. I am slow of speech and tongue. I don't wanna go."

God says, "Listen, I don't wanna hear about you being slow of speech and tongue. I'm talking through a bush right now. You can go."

Moses continues to hem and haw. He says, "Fine, I'll send your brother Aaron." Aaron shows up. Moses is given some miracles that he can do and he's like, "Okay, I guess I'll go."

So he goes and very steadily walks through this process with Pharaoh. He's like, "The Lord God says, let my people go." Pharaoh says no and hardens his heart. God hardens his heart—that's a whole another discussion. Anyway, there's all these plagues, one after another, all of which are tied to Egyptian gods and goddesses essentially showing that God is supreme over all of the Egyptian gods.

It ends with this very dramatic issue from Pharaoh where he's like, "All the firstborn kids are gonna get killed." But then that backfires and it actually winds up being the Egyptians whose firstborn kids are killed in the last plague because of the blood that the Hebrew people put over their doorposts—the lamb's blood, significant of Christ's blood. Christians, good.

This institutes the Passover, which is celebrated by Jewish people perpetually going forward because this is one of the greatest pictures of God's salvation of their people and continues to be. It is essentially a picture of Christ and his salvation for his people.

Pharaoh finally is like, "Okay, enough, go." So they go and they get into a cul-de-sac with the Red Sea. It's really nice, right? Until Pharaoh and his army show up and he's like, "Kidding. I changed my mind. Now, die."

God comes down in a pillar of fire and protects the people. That's dramatic enough but it's not just fire. The sea parts, and everybody walks through. Then the pillar of fire goes away and the people get out, Pharaoh goes into the waters, and right as the people get out, the waters come crashing down. It's a great story—why Hollywood keeps wanting to make it into movies, animated or otherwise.

It's an incredible picture of how God used Moses primarily from chapter three on to bring about the salvation—a very watery salvation—of his people.

The Beautiful Interplay Between Moses and Miriam

Now I want you to see something. Notice the beautiful interplay between Moses and Miriam's role in the redemption work that God was doing. There's no Moses without Miriam, but then Moses acts as kind of a defender and is essentially responsible for delivering Miriam from the waters. So Miriam is saved by Moses. Moses is saved by Miriam. Do you see the beautiful interplay of their relationship? Do you see how Miriam serves as kind of a protector, a caregiver, a nurturer in her role? Moses serves as kind of a defender, a champion, a deliverer. And there's this beautiful harmony between how God worked through both of them.

Sometimes all we talk about is Moses. Yet God wants us to see in Exodus 15 that it wasn't just Moses. Imagine the beauty of coming through this—they're probably like 80 years old at this point—and all that God has done in this salvific work through the Exodus. Moses and Miriam in the intimacy of their relationship suddenly see how he was doing all of this perfectly, beautifully, poetically.

We're gonna talk about the worship service specifically, but I do want to pause because this is the point at which, in verse 20, Miriam is referred to as a prophetess. The prophet and prophetess are the two roles that Moses and Miriam have.

I want to pause here and talk about this for a minute. Obviously, Moses is regarded as the greatest prophet of the Old Testament, right? He's reluctant, but God uses him in incredible ways. How is Miriam a prophetess? That's a little bit less clear, right? We don't get her name at the beginning of Exodus. We don't hear much about what she did. It's not like Aaron and Miriam show up to go with Moses to confront Pharaoh. It's not Moses speaking to the people a bunch, Miriam talking to the people a bunch. You don't hear a lot about that. She's just referred to as a prophetess here.

I would submit to you that there are a couple of different ways in which we're told she is a prophetess that goes beyond just talking to God's people. I think there's a beautiful interplay in the worship service that's revealing the harmonization of these two roles.

Think about this: Moses went to Pharaoh. Miriam went to Pharaoh's daughter. I talked about the beautiful boldness and rebellious nature of that. Both of them had that character in how they approached Pharaoh and Pharaoh's daughter. Miriam was, I would argue, a prophetess in that she went before Moses said, "God has said, let my people go." She went to Pharaoh's daughter and said, "God has said, let my deliverer go." Do you see?

What Is a Prophet?

She's a prophetess, and that brings us to the question: What is a prophet? I had a lot of questions asked of me this week because I was talking about this to some people. They were saying, "What are you preaching on?" I said, "We're going to talk about our prophetic roles," and people were like, "Am I a prophet? Do I have that gift? Ain't that you, preacher? You're the prophet, right? Not me."

I had that conversation with at least three women who were like, "I'm not sure I'm a prophetess."

And here's what I want you to understand: You need to understand what a prophet is. Everyone kind of thinks that a prophet is someone who speaks to God and tells the future. That ain't wrong, but it can lead to some misconceptions. A lot of times people just talk about being a prophet and they're talking about whether or not they can tell the future. Can I predict the lottery numbers? No, not a prophet. Can I predict what's going to happen in the church tomorrow? No, not a prophet. That's not what a prophet is. It's not some sort of fortune teller. There are fortune tellers in the Bible, but they're not referred to as prophets. There is a fortune telling aspect to what prophets do, but it's not just telling the future.

Here's the best way I know to understand it. Think about it in legal terms: Prophets and priests are lawyers. Prophets are God's lawyers. Priests are our lawyers. In other words, prophets represent God to the people, and priests represent the people to God. But what, exactly? Well, they have a relationship called a covenant.

Now, think about that in legal terms. Have you ever signed a covenant? Those of you who are leasing a house have signed a covenant, right? You have signed an agreement where you agree to pay X number of dollars every month in order to have a house with a roof over your head and water running through the pipes. Your landlord signs too. Well, what happens if you don't pay your rent? Eventually, one of the lawyers from the landlord is going to come and say, "Hey, you haven't paid your rent. If you don't pay your rent, I'm going to tell the future. You're going to get kicked out." Do you see? There is a future-telling component that lawyers have in that situation.

Prophets in the Old Testament do that all the time. They go to God's people and say, "Hey, remember the covenant? Remember the agreement with God? Hey, if you don't do that, there's going to be curses that were stipulated in Deuteronomy—things like famine. That's going to come." That's what prophets typically do. They came and, in some ways, predicted the future related to the covenant promises of God.

So do you see how Moses, when he comes and talks to Pharaoh, he's talking about the promises of God? God has made a special purpose for these people to worship Him, not to stay here in Egypt and be enslaved to you. "I'm telling you the future, Pharaoh. God's going to deliver His people. Let them go. Or the covenant stipulations dictate that you will have to experience God's wrath in these various different ways, because they are my blessed people, right? Do you see?"

He's kind of coming like a lawyer, and so is Miriam to Pharaoh's daughter. But more than that, I do believe that Miriam served God's people in a similar way that Moses did. He spoke through her. God spoke through Miriam to his people. And the reason I know that is Micah 6:4.

It talks specifically, God is saying to his people in Micah, he's like, look, I've given you all this stuff. I brought you out of Egypt. I not only brought you out of Egypt, gave you these great leaders. Moses, Aaron, and Miriam are the three that he lists. — Micah 6:4

She was responsible for leading God's people in significant ways. Now, what are the implications for us? Like I said, I had three conversations with three different women in this congregation and all of them said, "I'm not a prophetess." Here's what I want to say to you women: you're all prophetesses. You are all prophets. In the same way that all of you men are prophets.

All Believers as Prophets

You see, what happened in Joel chapter two, God talks through the prophet Joel and he says, "In the olden times, I would pick people and I would pour out my spirit on them. Elijah, Elisha, Micah, Joel, right? Different prophets would get this incredible experience of me. And once they had this incredible experience of me, I would give them my word and they would go and speak that to the people. But in the future, I will pour out my spirit on all people and they will dream dreams and have visions, young men, old men, men, women, doesn't matter, everybody."

That's what Joel says. — Joel 2

Well, in Acts chapter two, Peter, after receiving the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, goes out and starts talking to all the people. All the apostles are prophesying and speaking in tongues. And he comes out and he says, "They're not drunk. This is the fulfillment of Joel chapter two."

— Acts 2

So here's the thing, Christians: we believe that all believers are endowed with the Holy Spirit. You have received the spirit. You are the fulfillment of Joel 2. You are prophets. It baffles me because in Protestant circles, we talk about the priesthood of all believers, but we never talk about the prophethood of all believers. But that is true. That is a principle because in Christ, we receive the spirit and we inherit all of his offices: prophet, priest, and king. You're all three all the time. Not because you're great, but because Jesus is great. And because he has given you his spirit.

Now, here's where we get tripped up with this, women, I think. There's this verse in the New Testament in First Corinthians 14. What does it say? "Women should be silent in church."

— 1 Corinthians 14

Are you familiar with that verse? You've probably heard it or had it quoted to you or wrestled with it or been mad at it. You've had some sort of interaction with that if you've been in the church and you're a woman for any period of time.

First Corinthians 14 says women should learn quietly with all submission. They want to speak. They should wait and go home and talk to their husbands. — 1 Corinthians 14

Is that suggesting that you should be silent through this entire worship service, that you shouldn't say anything, that we shouldn't have women up here reading scripture or giving testimonies or when we sing that you should just sit there and wait until you get home with your husbands to sing? Absolutely not.

If you read First Corinthians, the entire book and not just chapter 14—in chapter 11, Paul is specifically talking about women in the church, in the worship service, actively praying and prophesying. What does he mean prophesying? They're talking about the covenant with other believers in the context of the worship service.

What First Corinthians 14 is saying is that Paul is dealing with a situation in Corinth where it's absolute chaos in the worship service. Just imagine—we can't imagine it because we're Presbyterians. Nothing like this has ever happened. But imagine if there was a food fight and I was up here and I was saying, "Thus saith the Lord," but somebody out there was like, "God didn't say that." And we were having an argument about whether or not Exodus is actually in the Bible, and then I start throwing things and they start throwing things. That was the situation in Corinth.

Paul is basically saying, "No, listen. We're all prophets, but there should be order to our prophecy. Speaking in tongues should be done for the edification of the body."

He is concerned with the order of the church and exactly this—the message of the promise being clear and present to all people and edifying. So what he's saying is, rather than there being these disagreements, if there is a disagreement, this should be worked out at home, right? That's what he's saying. He's saying there are limits to the prophetic authority. Like, just like everybody has limits to their prophetic authority. I have limits, right? I am subject to authority. If I start getting up here and start preaching in a way that is not honoring to Christ, right? I have violated any kind of authority that I have as a pastor. I do have authority as an elder in this church, right? But you know who has more authority? Jesus. Right? Okay? So we all have differing kinds of levels of authority. That's all Paul is saying in that passage. He's talking about authority. He's not saying women should be absolutely silent, absolutely all the time in worship and never say a word, okay?

So women, hear me. We need your prophetic voices. We need them on Sunday morning. We need them throughout the week. I need them. I can tell you specific circumstances and times within this church where women have come to me with a prophetic word. They never use that term because we're Presbyterians, right? They come preaching the gospel. That's what we call it. We preach the gospel, right? We don't come with a prophetic word, but that is a prophetic word. If you're preaching the gospel, you are giving a prophetic word. Please, women, preach the gospel, give prophetic words.

I have received that. There was a time when I was interviewing for the job at Saint David's School where I worked for ten years, and I was so nervous. A woman in this church came to me and she said, "James, the Bible says we have not been given a spirit of fear." And I was like, you're absolutely right. I was so encouraged by that. I was so challenged by that. And it was such a welcome word from the Lord spoken through a woman prophetically to an elder. It's okay. It's good.

When we started commissioning women—the Parakaleo team—and we started empowering women's voices to be spoken throughout the church, I cannot tell you from a pastoral standpoint how helpful that was to people in our church. I watched as their voices speaking the gospel into other people's lives brought flourishing and beauty. Please, women, use your prophetic voice. And two out of the three parts that Danny wanted us to sing this morning were female parts, right? Soprano and alto. We need you singing. We need you praying. We need you sharing your testimonies.

Now, we will talk about the authoritative limitations and all of that, but we spend enough time talking about that. I want you to hear this morning the value of your voice. It's consistent throughout Scripture. It goes all the way back to the Old Testament with Miriam. She was a prophetess. God speaks through women.

Men, I also need to say this: Moses was reluctant. We have a reputation of being reluctant not because we don't feel like we have the authority, but because we feel like doofuses. We have a doofus dynamic where we're just kind of like, I can't speak prophetically because who am I? You know, I'm slow of speech and tongue. If God can speak through donkeys and bushes and all sorts of other things—Jesus says, look, if you guys don't do it, I'm going to make the rocks cry out. Men, we need your prophetic voices. We need you to preach the gospel to other people. We need you to be active in that and not tell God to send somebody else. You are called along with women. We need both voices. God uses both of them together in harmony to be prophetic in a watching world. Okay? Alright. Enough of that.

The Song of Worship

On to the worship service, and I have very little time. We had this song that we read, and you were probably like, uh-huh. This is really long because it never really comes off really well when you read a song with a group of people. It's like monotone. It's like, "and then the riders were cast into the sea," right? But I want you to see how exuberant the people of Israel were when they sang this, how majestic this song would have been, how amazing it would have been for Moses and Miriam specifically as they were singing this song.

Have you ever experienced that in worship where you start singing a song and all of a sudden you realize this song is about me? This song is about what God has done in my life this week, right? And sometimes I've seen it in some of your eyes—you start to weep, right? There were tears in Moses and Miriam's eyes. I like to think. The Bible doesn't say it. So I—you know—but I think like, think of the beauty of this. The watery rescue that had taken place in both of their lives, that they had both witnessed of each other, that they had both participated in for each other, is brought to its culmination in this incredible moment, and they just burst into song.

I love musicals, but they don't really feel like real life usually because it's not typically the case that you're just walking along and all of sudden you have a happy moment and there are bells, right? But that's the Christian life. That's why we do this every week. We have to pause every so often and burst into song because God has done amazing things in our life—individually, together. And when we come together and we see our faces, different genders brought together harmoniously with the presence of the Holy Spirit by the blood of Christ, that should go deep. As it did for them.

I want you to look at the subject of the song. Notice the poetic beauty of it. We could spend a lot of time with this, but just look at this. There's a juxtaposition about God's enemies being cast down into the sea and his people being raised up, brought to his holy mountain, right? And that is the refrain that is sung also by Miriam and the women. There's this beautiful juxtaposition of what God is doing over and over throughout the song.

I want you to understand the names Moses and Miriam and what they meant. Do you know what Moses means? This one's a little bit more widely known. Does anybody know? Drawn out. Right? That's what he was called because he was drawn out of the water. Miriam is less obvious. In fact, scholars debate over what her name means, but the Hebrew word mayim is water. They think that may be the origin of the name Miriam.

So you have these two leaders of God's people in scripture that are specifically mentioned. Aaron's not mentioned. There are lots of other people that could have been mentioned that were there, but Moses and Miriam—drawn out, water—are singing the song about how God's people have been drawn out from the water while their enemies have been left to die and they've been brought up on the Holy Mountain.

There's a poetic structure to Exodus 15 where we are meant to see not only the beauty of that moment, not only the beauty of the song, but the beauty of how God has woven these two lives together in order to do this magnificent act. There's a masculine and a feminine component. There's even masculine and feminine components in the poetry in the language of the ancient world. All of those languages had masculine and feminine pieces. They're all brought together in Exodus 15—masculine and feminine verbiage, a man and a woman whose names reflect the actual song that is being sung.

Brothers and sisters, as we are brought into the kingdom of God, God takes our story and weaves it together with one another in a way that is absolutely beautiful, majestic, and mind-blowing. When we get to heaven, we will experience this to the fullest. Suddenly, you'll know how your name, your story fits in the grand narrative of redemption. All of a sudden, all of the beauty and majesty of how God used you and how God used other people fused together—men, women, different relationships, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters—have all been brought together for the glory of God. And you will realize you're in a musical and you can't do anything but sing. Won't that be a majestic and powerful and amazing moment? It's pictured in Revelation 7. I can't wait to get to that service.

Growing up, all my friends listened to rock music. I listened to soundtracks—John Williams. I used to drive through Asheville like a crazy person listening to Star Wars music and thinking I was on the Millennium Falcon. I got so many speeding tickets growing up. You know why? Because an orchestra has so much power. I would tell my friends who loved rock, "Rock is great, I like it, but an orchestra has so many different pieces. It has the power to move you in so many different ways."

Brothers and sisters, as we talk about gender, that's what we're going for. Men and women working together for the glory of God to the end of giving glory to God for the work that he has done in and through us for eternity. May we see that here at Christ the King. In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Lord Jesus, please empower us to do this. It is a difficult time to think about men and women and our relationship together. There's so much brokenness in the fall. And yet Lord, we know that there is so much more power in your redemption. Would you work through our relationships to give a picture, a glimpse of that to the world? May they long for more. And Lord, we just pray that you would use us to bring people to your name. In Jesus' name, Amen.